The unmoored model adrift from the shores of purpose and function

A speculative modelling practice that commenced in 1996 and produces (vaguely) architectural models is examined to elicit what has been revealed by this project concerning making and knowing. The practice is positioned with respect to the normal representational modelling of design disciplines. The models emerging from the practice described are ‘autonomous’. It is argued that the account given of such a practice must be personal. Thus, the character and the places of modelling are recounted, and intention is deemed to be unavoidably shaped by the maker’s autobiography. The mapping of ideas that display allusive characteristics onto modelled forms exemplifies some of the theoretical positions evident in the concepts of material engagement theory, agency, affordance and accommodation, and each of these is discussed briefly. Processes of exhibiting are considered, and the position put is that models embody personal and disciplinary knowings and are richly communicative. Given that they are often elaborated by word-based accounts, someone interrogating a model can bring what they know to bear upon a model, enrich their knowings, engage in collective dialogues and thus contribute to the collective disciplinary knowledge.